


that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

by carlemon



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Drabble, Friendship/Love, Missing Scenes, Multi, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-11 12:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12934989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlemon/pseuds/carlemon
Summary: Victor Criss before that fatal summer, with the kids he loved in the spaces between Henry and Belch.





	1. moose. (summer)

**Author's Note:**

> title from **a softer world 788:** _(that's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise)_  
>  i don't believe each person has just one true love, but sometimes we don't have enough time to find another.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vic and Moose waste away a splendid summery afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more or less book canon, but ages somewhere between book canon and movie canon's. vic still has life in him, seeing as mr chips is not referenced in the movie im assuming hes alive, etc.

Let it be known that Steve Sadler could not play ball for shit. 

He made this very evident each time Hank wasn’t around, prompting Vic to gather up him and Peter, sometimes Gard, to go down to the diamond with Belch. He was a half-decent pitcher, was Steve, and an alright runner; his legs and arms were strong, hardy, after what Vic figured had been a half-dozen years of tilling Hanlon’s land, but when pressed in a situation that demanded both of these skills in tandem, he was simply useless. Only once had he managed to strike one of Vic’s pitches, (a sinker, it’d been, a real nasty one with which he’d once taken out one of little Eddie Corcoran’s big buck teeth) and he’d knocked it right out of the fucking park, with Belch and Peter hooting madly either side of him. It’d been dumb luck, though, dumb as he was: he’d been just as puzzled by it as Vic, and had never managed to hit anything again.

So on sweltering summer days like these when the buzz of cicadas was a tangible, _palpable_ presence on Vic’s newly-braced teeth and empty stomach, they fucked around by the Barrens and the ironworks instead, crunching broken glass and roadkill under their boots. Occasionally, Vic’d shoot him a half-daring glance and propose he slide down the banks in the stream where it got too deep, stuff he himself’d have to be paid a fat sum to even consider, and Moose would return it and bound in, all jittery, clumsy stride; occasionally, he’d say something real bizarre, real _dumbfuck_ , and Vic’d laugh despite himself, catching in brief flashes between convulsions the slow dopey smile that stretched lazily out across Moose’s open, rounded face like spittly Juicy Fruit, or a cut. 

"Whatcha lookin’ at?” he challenged, biting out the soft consonants, and Moose was too fucking dumb and charming and guileless to avert his eyes, instead sweeping big chunks of his unkempt frazzled hair away from his glitter-eyed look. He was a simple thing, he was, not nearly as even all-there as Belch or Henry, and Vic couldn’t quite remember where they’d picked him up, (it’d been sixth grade, surely, or maybe seventh. He’d popped up when Hanlon had, he figured, like a fucking daisy out the wasted earth) but he could be fun, and he was around sometimes when they weren’t. “C’mon, what’re you looking at? You see something you like?”

Moose grinned sloppily, honestly. “You’re a real metalmouth now, Vic. A real fuckin’ loser.” He laughed an ugly chortle that trickled down to a slow calm like water out a brook, —like the stream out all li’l Wheezy Kaspbrak and Stuttering Denbrough's damn baby-dams and other worthless pursuits— but didn’t quite dwindle down to nothing, even when Vic administered a hard sharp jab to his shoulder. 

“What’s that make you, then? What’s that make you, asshole?” he spat, but grinned almost merrily as Moose wheezed desperately with mirth. The sun beat down hard on both of them, lighting up the hard planes of the ironworks from the inside ‘til they seemed almost red-hot. He lashed out lazily and caught Moose’s curled, unsure, hand, the both of them sweat-slicked, dizzied by boyhood and youth and the fucking excruciating heat. “Let’s get out of here, before this heat fries your fuckin' brains.” 

There was already a tiger-stripe of sunburn up the bridge of Moose’s nose. Moose was baby, was mild, was _safe_ enough to fuck with so he slid a hand up it, thumb at the corner of his mouth, nails scrapping the angry red flush. Red as a cherry. Red as an apple. Moose made a pleasant sound. “We could stay awhile. I think I saw the dog a while back, we could hide him away an’—”

The dog. Hanlon’s dog. Vic didn’t quite care for the mutt. “Or, we couldn’t. Whatever, I know I’m out of here. I’m fucking starving.” He petted his stomach, for emphasis. Moose’s eyes followed the movement with the same dim half-joking glint in them, and he caved like something dilapidated. 

“Alright,” he relented. “Alright, _I’m fucking starving—”_

His voice rolled over the consonants, again like water over rocks, over the grit and the dirt, whenever he parroted Vic. Vic laughed harshly and slapped a hand onto his sunburn, getting a protracted wheedling howl in response as they dragged themselves out the superheated shade of the ironworks. They soon found that there wasn’t any Chinese to be had, not today, —the damn Jade of the Orient was closed; Vic’s luck, really— and so ended up elsewhere. “ _Where?_ Where’re we going?” Vic’d heaved out his imploring in pained torpid sighs weathered by the sun, gummy and not at all himself in its suffocating swelter.

“Somewhere, Vic,” Moose’d burbled. “You sound like a girl. Somewhere, c’mon—” And off he’d gone, Vic loping after him, clipping his stride short to stay by his side.

Moose didn’t have his own farm or property, not really, but the Sadler family had to its name a little patch of land just off the Hanlon’s, a former orchard peppered by ugly apple trees and felled boughs. It’s there that they ended up sitting cross-legged in the shade provided by one particularly grotesque-looking specimen, itched by the grass. “You’ve got a shit _'somewhere'_ over here,” Vic’d said, with his head and shoulders propped up against the trunk, but he had to admit that it was nice. It was simple, no illustrious or menacing comfort, requiring no effort to impress or jibe at on his part.

It was probably for this reason that he was friends with Moose, even if he was such a mangy thing, perpetually sunburnt and with the enviable brains of a rock. Moose crawled to him on his knees and settled by him, his dungarees stiff with sweat and filth, crinkling against Vic’s jeans. He’d paid near a damn fortune for them, scavenged off the kids Henry beat on and Belch beat in his games, but he was truly too fucking tired to mind as Moose sucked on the space of gum left by his missing tooth. 

“Hick,” Vic sniggered. Moose gave him an odd, bewildered look, slightly baleful, but didn’t say anything of it, and when Vic bemoaned the hunger pressing shards of glass into his stomach, he got to his feet, swaying slightly; imbalanced without Henry to shout him into action and hold him properly upright. 

“Y’wait here, Vic,” he said vaguely. “You wait awhile, alright? Don’t go.” The bow of his mouth dipped into a strange grin and then he was off. Vic carded his fingers through his scalp and let him go, dozing off in the pleasant shade.

When he came to, Moose was standing over him with an armful of apples.

“Where the fuck did you get those?” They were slightly worm-eaten, some shrivelled, some smaller than others. Still, he salivated, and had to fist a hand into his jacket to avoid reaching out. When he looked up, Moose’s face was open and proud and bright, lit up by the dappled sunlight. His freckles stuck out from his sunburn like bubbles of oil or flecks of dirt, emphasising the uneven planes and slopes of his features. Whenever he saw him, Vic wanted to poke him, though he didn’t with the regularity that Peter and sometimes Belch did.

“I’ll give you a guess, Vic. One.” Vic snorted, but played along. _Peter help him._

“You stole ‘em.” Moose’s expression crinkled and warped, becoming inexplicably pleased. Vic felt himself grin, too; felt all-boy and unburdened, at ease in this corner of straw-like grass and damp earth. “That’s not bad, Steve,” he mused, “not bad at all. Jeezum, don’t tell me you took ‘em off some bird. Some cunt _biddy_ on her way to the market—” He laughed, darkly, at the idea. Surely Moose could not smile any wider.

Impossibly, he did.

“Hanlon,” he snickered in a spit-filled rush. “I got ‘em off Hanlon’s trees.”

And Vic was up like a rocket. Moose got to his knees again, showing his bounty. _(Surely not_ , thought Vic. Surely not good ol’ Steve Sadler, too slow for his own good, too slow for any of them. Fucking _surely.)_ Up close, they were luscious and red, bright as Moose’s sunburn, the pleased flush across the apples _(ha—)_ of his cheeks. “I fuckin’ swear, Vic; they’re off Hanlon’s— I swear on my damn fucking life—”

Vic shot out a hand, felling him easily. “Can it. Pass me one, it feels like I’m going to eat _myself_ in a bit.”

Moose complied, and they sat there in the shade, savouring their pilfered apples, the tempered heat. As the air around them became fecund and syrupy, flavoured crisp and sweet by the sprays of juice and Moose’s guileless laughter, their legs drifted together, thighs pressed flush. When Vic caught his regard with a tired eye and a raised eyebrow, Moose hacked out a chuckle, knocking his head hard on the bark of the tree when he threw it back to laugh. _“Sonuvabitch!”_

This, thought Vic in between voracious bites, was exactly why he’d let Moose —Steve— buddy up to him and Belch; this, this simple, unpretending thing and all his lack of complication, were just what the doctor’d ordered this fine summer’s day, and every fine summery day to come. “You’re really something, you know that? Jeezum, Steve, a right moron.”

Moose’s helpless laughter, somehow caught unawares, choked and was extinguished on his too-big mouthful of apple. He ate the pith, Vic noted. The pith, the seeds, and everything. Let it be known that Steve Sadler didn’t know jack shit, about apples or anything. Let it be known that Vic could give less of a shit anyways. 

“Fuck’ou!” he cried cordially, and his teeth flashed, the shine broken only by the red curl of his tongue in the space of a missing one. When he got close to Vic, too close, and glanced his mouth off his, too slippery, it was more like he was trying to kiss his braces or his mouthful of apple or his teeth, but Vic hiccuped with laughter, uninhibited and summery and free as he shoved him off and sneered.

He told him, quite bluntly: “You're no good at that.” Plenty else they could do anyways that wasn't so damn queer— in both ways. Vic turned his apple in his hands, regarding him sideways. “You really eat the middles, Steve? It’s freaking me out.”

Moose got that, at least, because he peeled himself off Vic and began to pick at his sunburn instead, stamping hard onto worms making their way into his grassy stack of apples and mushing them into oozy smatter. “’s the best part.”

“You’re really a damn idiot.”

They stayed there 'til just before sunset, 'til the pile was all but gone.


	2. greta. (autumn)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Vic got his hair done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slight clashing of canons, here: movie canon in that they're all around 15-16, and belch has a car, but greta is still well and truly greta bowie, (with bullshit justification on my part) and eddie's crush on her features briefly.

More or less, Vic liked to keep out of trouble. In fact, when it boiled down to it, he liked to keep to himself, to Belch and to Henry and sometimes some of the others. It was easiest, he’d found, with a ball; sometimes, with a bat. Belch’s presence helped often, and he’d found it quite nice to spend fall afternoons tossing screwballs at him that he’d then volley into windows and off the little kids’ little foreheads instead of cruising ‘round looking for packs of the little fuckers to scatter.

His problems lay, among other places, therein. Vic’d been like all the others in that he hadn’t quite cared for girls throughout fifth, sixth, seventh grade, (boyhood, he must’ve figured, was for ruin and riot, running wild and getting your kicks in before ninth grade stole in and knocked all the wind out of you) more than content to simper at Mueller and pull on Ripsom’s pigtails, and then eighth grade had come and kicked him in the damn teeth it seemed, because suddenly he was preparing for highschool and who sprang into his life but Greta fucking Bowie. 

He didn’t know an awful lot about girls, (this sometimes embarrassed him for a brief moment before he got ahold of himself again: if he didn’t know much, chances were the others wouldn’t either, maybe save for Peter who’d been joined at the hip to Marcia since about fifth grade. Certainly Henry wouldn’t— Vic knew that much from the vague looks of disinterest and dissatisfaction and all the other unfeeling  _dis’_ s he levelled at Carla Bordeaux and Cissy Clark and their girlfriends when they passed the Trans Am on the way to lunch) but out of what he did know, he could quite easily rank Greta top out of all of them. She was tall, but not as much as he; _(thank god)_ very blonde. Though pretty fucking hot in what was probably a boyish sort of way, she did not at all keep to herself. All of Derry knew Greta Bowie: her presence was an indelible mark on West Broadway, beautifying the shitty conceit of the place so well he could almost ignore it as he cruised through in the Trans Am with Belch. Her friendship with the other girls was testimony to this in itself: she didn’t have Marcia’s cawing laugh, nor was she as restless and lively as Sally, but there was an energy to her, brutal and brash, that allowed her to champion their posse through the school halls come the end of summer.

“She’d fucking snap you in half,” Belch had mused once, chortling away merrily to himself. Vic’d shot him an idle glare, but he hadn’t been wrong. Greta was a well-off girl, a strawberry-pucker girl, a Broadway-born-and-made nice girl, but she didn’t seem like the sort of chick who needed a guy to hover over her like all the other berry-picking, cherry-popped nice girls. He’d heard off the proverbial grapevine of all the little shits that she didn’t mind an odd drink or smoke, but she didn’t smoke cigarettes, and she didn't drink beer. He thought about that sometimes, detachedly, as he ashed his own smokes over Belch’s dash.

He probably could’ve gone the whole year without knowing jack shit about girls, anyhow, if not for Henry. Henry was all trouble, and whereas Vic liked trouble he also quite liked to have the line separating what was alright from what was _TOO FAR_ drawn and drawn quite clearly, and while for the most part Henry liked that too, he tended to stray over its parameters. With old Butch Bowers missing in action come fall, Henry was free to drag around the rest of them as he liked, free to grin and fight and bawl as he liked. Vic minded none of these things, ‘til the last landed him Sally Mueller in the Trans Am after Henry’d caught her lost down Main Street and yowled “Get in!” at her, as he was wont to do at all the pretty-looking blondes they snagged in Amy’s rearview mirror. Contrary to popular belief, nice girls didn’t carry torches for nice guys, no-sir, and Sally Mueller ended up carrying a torch for none other but Moose Sadler that day; Moose and his slow, pained, blinks, his garbled chattering laughter about yellowbellies and how far he could hock a loogie. 

Everyone knew that Mueller and Bowie were pals, but Vic hadn’t really cared or put two-and-two together ‘til Sally’s favour landed them in Greta’s. The latter passed him in the hallways and shot him sharp glances; once, he’d caught a snippet of a conversation with Marcia, a disdainful “you know you could do better than Pete, anyways, _everyone_ knows he’s a one-minute wonder,” and he’d laughed despite himself and like a wretched bastard, to her thin-smiling appraisal.

Greta Bowie was a Broadway good-girl and a megaphone and a magnet to which all the other girls were inexplicably drawn, but that didn’t do anything to stop Vic carrying that torch and carrying it high. “Lookit you, you fucking fruit!” cried Peter when he held his up head long enough to catch her eye in the hallways and volley her verging-on familiar grin with a placid face of acknowledgement, “You’re whipped as shit, buddy! She don't like boys like that, who does?” Vic’d granted him an unamused, darting look, but the thing about Greta Bowie was that she _did_ , or seemed to. One bitter autumn's afternoon she’d gotten a good look at the Trans Am, and girls from West Broadway weren’t supposed to give two shits about cars, but _she_ did, and hey presto, she was no longer one of them (them being all the other little jerks living it up on Broadway) but one of _Them_ — but, only on her terms. Vic could respect a chick like that, and more or less hurled himself off the deep end of being well and truly gone for her, gone in deep and like the wind as she slid into their haunts on days she could be bothered.

Greta Bowie was indeed no smoker (Belch'd lit one up in front of her once, the key word being _once_ ; she’d snatched it out of his hand all vicious, and Vic’s heart had _leapt_ , christ help him) but she seemed to like the following: fitting in, standing out, bitching and bickering, hollering on about half-bullshit, music loud enough to make a migraine with, and the wind in her hair. They seemed to provide many, if not all of these things. When Henry pulled on her hair _(metaphorically)_ , she pulled on his _(literally)_. Sometimes Vic hovered at her shoulder and she’d spit “little _shits_ ,” at the kids who gawked too long, madder red pout a pop of colour on her pretty face. “What’re you looking at?” 

A part of him figured this was for his sake— she didn’t seem to mind his presence, not at all. Certainly less than she did Henry’s. _She don’t mind you at all, Vic, but precious little would, against Hockstetter. Keep letting that flame burn, Vic. Keep it blazing._

 _Thump thump thump._ That was his heart. He let it happen, adrift in the feeling, and swallowed all his nervous bile when he came up behind her in the halls and felt her jacket scratch his flimsy shirtsleeve. _Girls like Bowie and Mueller and Fadden don’t hang out with boys like you, Criss,_ said a little voice at his throat, and he knew this, but sometimes Greta was _all_ out-there and bright and not at all like Mueller and _her_ pals, —all acid wash and pronounced, glittery flicks of her very blonde hair— nothing about her subdued or ashamed or docile and,

and, well,

_(keep dreaming, vic, kid. keep dreaming.)_

She —and Marcia, and Sally, but mostly her alone— had a vendetta against the Marsh chick that rivalled Henry’s business with Hanlon and all the other numbnuts talking trash down his neck, and it was this that stitched her into their circle on weekend nights before the big West Broadway parties, spent by them hurling rocks at parked cars and making like they were skipping stones across the stream that ran burbling through the Barrens. They sat on the diamond when the Tracker Brothers were long closed, sharing beers and malted shakes with mouths grinning wolfishly, slickly, on the paper rims of their cups. Vic soon knew more about Bev Marsh the whore-child than he’d ever wanted to, and learnt that Belch considered her an alright chick, but certainly none of the rest of them were supposed to. Even Henry who liked to crack them all the fuck up on a couple of beers with long winding tales about his prospects with Bev on days she made the mistake of existing near him said nary a word as Greta jibed at he and Bev both.

Her fingers ended in clear-varnished nails with a hit of glitter, and looked very soft. Vic looked at the ground and curled and uncurled his own into idle fists. There was nothing worth watching on at the movies and nowhere to fuck off to that wasn’t creepy as shit come dark in Derry’s fall, and because none of them could let the matter drop, they droned on and on and on. “Whattabout you, Moose?” demanded Marcia shrilly, and shot sly glances at Greta and Sally, mostly the latter. “What about you, do _you_ think she’s hot? Like big boy Reggie here—”

“I didn’t—” started Belch but Peter hit him hard in the shoulder and he shut up with a glare. _Let her speak._ It was always _let Marcia speak_.

“I wouldn’t mind myself a dirty girl,” decided Moose amicably and the boys hooted vaguely, Vic among them, the girls crowed and sighed, and they went ‘round and ‘round the circle, again and again. When Marcia got to Vic he was on his fourth beer and his braces hurt and he wanted so badly to fuck off back home just to be away from her high laugh a little while, that instead of anything characteristically aloof or leery, he said this:

“I like blondes.”

Shucks, he did, really, and they were half _all_ fucking blondes, even Henry, (”How sweet, how pansy!” tittered dainty Sally Mueller) but Greta must’ve been the blondest or something because Marcia put two-and-two together and in a second there was too much of her, too close to him, and they were all having a chortle at god knows what with another few beers busted out the crate, and come the noon of the morrow Marcia was scooping him into the Trans Am and carting him across West Broadway.

(”Blondes, Victor, _blondes?_ You’d look sweet blonde, Criss, a real fucking cutie-pie. How ‘bout—”)

Now he gazed uncertainly at the Bowie household, a green-shingled monolith matching all the other McMansions lined up like dominoes down Broadway. (”Couldn’t you do it, Greta?” Marcia’d crooned, figuring herself slick, probably. “Couldn’t you? You did mine— look how good it turned out. _Look_.” Peter had a moment of horrible epiphany at the fact that his girlfriend was not indeed a natural blonde, and then— “Sure, why not. You’ll look less like you just crawled dead out of a ditch.” Hadn’t _Greta_ said that, to Vic? Hadn’t she _smiled_ at him, her canines impossibly sharp yet her smile impossibly whimsical despite it?) A loud honk resounded behind him; it was Belch, nodding for him to go up, ring the doorbell. Hockstetter sat behind him, making claws that pierced his headrest; beside _him_ sat Gard, snickering away with a half-jolly but wholly cruel curious smile, and beside Belch, none other but Marcia herself.

He must’ve looked like fucking _shit_ then in his boots and tattered jeans, shirt sweaty and dirty: a big boy still having his friends chaperone and tote him around. He flipped them all the bird and loped up to Greta’s front door, noting the indents in the green where lawn umbrellas and croquet sets had been torn out of the carefully-manicured lawn and bundled away for next summer. Girls like Greta had families who played croquet and didn’t even have to sneak into concerts, and they certainly didn’t get their noses broken in makeshift mosh pits. (Vic still had a bump down its bridge.) They didn't trade cigs for beer. They didn't cram into their friends' rides and hang out the windows. Girls like Greta didn’t—

 _Walk tall, Vic, c’mon_. He knocked quickly, and Greta opened the door quickly, and ushered him in without ordering him to remove his shoes. She didn’t greet him, not per se, or smile, but her carefully-manicured hand bumped his as she swept him up the stairs, and she was eating a lollipop the precise shade of her summer-berry pucker with protracted glistening curls of her tongue around its curvature, and these were both infinitely better things to think about. They came to her room, which had a bay window and a writing desk and a fluffy white carpet. He caught a glimpse of himself in her big gilt-framed mirror and fiddled with his hair as she bustled around him, collecting something-or-others and bottles. _Jeezum crow, Vic. Motherfucking christ almighty._

He really did look like something that had crawled dead out of a ditch.

Suddenly there was her beside him. “Sit,” she ordered. He looked around and she nodded pointedly at the floor by her bed, blanketed with a stack of mangy-looking towels. Upon her provocation, he got down onto them, pulling himself in tight, cross-legged. She settled above him on her bed, also cross-legged. Bottles bled out of her full armfuls, bumping against his head when she set them down. “Christ, when did you last wash your hair?”

He thought about it. (He figured it at least a week ago.) “Yesterday.” Vic was an alright liar through his teeth, but it was an odd contrast, that formed between his dirt and sweat and muffled spittly whispers, and the frills of Greta’s well-kept bedroom. She snorted hard above him, a vaguely friendly sound.

“Whatever. I’ve got gloves anyways.” Vic heard latex crinkling against itself and crimped his mouth into his hard line, looking himself up and down in her big silvery mirror. _Check it out!_ If this is what all the chicks saw each time they spared him and the others a gander it was no wonder neither he nor Hockstetter could get any— though, on second thought, this was no matter of great concern to either of them, though for different reasons entirely. This amused him detachedly and the corner of his mouth curved upward as Greta began to work above him. “I guess you don’t need a conditioner or something. Have you ever used prep?” He glanced up and got a good eyeful of _legs_ , uncrossed now and swinging either side of him, ending in bedazzled Keds with pristine-white laces. She eyed him, one eyebrow cocked, a lioness sizing up the hyena-baby scrounging off her turf. 

Vic’d never had fucking any of him bleached or dyed or— or anything, but knew, somewhat worriedly, that you couldn’t get that shit in your eyes, lest you wanted to go blind and as dumb as Jagermeyer and Moose. That being said, he was sure he’d never used prep. “Will it hurt?” _Nice going, Vic._ Something timorous trembled in his timbre and he stared her reflection in the eye, hunching his shoulders. “Shit, it’s not going to hurt. Is it?”

Greta gave him a look that blew how Marcia’d looked at him out the fucking water. _Are you kidding me?_ said that look, but in a less-mean way. She had in her hands a little bowl and she swung her legs, nudging his shoulder with her bare calf. “It’s not gonna hurt,” she told him, and he heard the grin there clear as day. “I mean, it shouldn’t,” she amended. “It will if you’re allergic to it, or something— jesus, it’s no big deal. If it turns out like shit we’ll just buzz it off.”

“Like fuck you will,” muttered Vic and Greta laughed, a glorious, vivacious thing. He craned his neck forward ‘til he could no longer see the red bow of her lips mouthing the words to Blondie’s Call Me atop his lank rat’s nest of dirt-hair. The bitter chill had scoured raw his haggard, tired cheeks; he was a mess of unpleasant murky swamp-colour from his raw blush to grimy nails and hair. Coming up her mother of pearl-inlaid banister he’d most likely left behind him a dry streak of dust off his boots—  _fucking incredible,_ he thought, dryly. 

When her hands rested against him again they were cold and wet and glancing up, he saw her rubbing into his scalp, all over him, something yoghurty. Expertly, her hands parted and combed over hanks of hair, pulling them away from his head and away from each other ‘til he looked something half-bald and rodent-like, hairless and half-stupid. The sight, though not particularly concerning, was unfamiliar, and he furrowed his brow, mildly disappointed when his reflection predictably did the same. “What,” he started, “the _fuck_.”

Greta darted him a shrewd look and combed a lock of hair the precise colour and sheen of honey off her forehead with the back of one hand. “What?” Her fingers curled over his scalp and though he did not jolt, a shiver chased the pleased flood of warmth down his spine.

“I, I look—”

“You look fucking dumb,” she said matter-of-factly. Well. Vic was not aware of how far his bottom lip jutted out ‘til she snorted again, yanking none-too-kind on a tuft of hair. “So what? No one’s gonna see.” Which was true— it was bad enough with Greta, it’d be unfathomably worse with Hank and Gard and all the rest of them. _Ho-lee jesus, Vic, what happened to you? You look like a fucking rat!_

“It isn’t fucking worth being blond.” This dull remark earned him another laugh and he ducked his head down as long as he could, pleased by it, as she worked on. He succumbed to the feeling for an indeterminable stretching period of time that came to an end when she wiped her hand on the back of his neck, jerking him back to reality.

“Okay, that looks good.” He raised his head, got a solid eyeful of himself in the mirror, and convulsed. (But only slightly.) Though largely a mess of pale yoghurty goop, there did indeed seem to be some trace of blonde in the wet spikes of his hair. Not nearly enough to warrant the time he’d (and she’d) had to take out of his day, anyhow. “You need to wash off now. Else it’ll burn,” she added. She looked slightly perplexed by his seamed mouth, his goldfish-face. He was significantly more perplexed by all of it, trying not to let it show.

“Wash it off,” he repeated.

“Unless you want to go out like that.” There was a constantly increasing number of things Vic would rather do, so he got up on provocation, taking the little bottle she pressed into her hand a mite numbly. “Shampoo,” she explained, none-too-patiently. Her pretty round face hid an air of unrest and, somehow, he got the idea that he was perhaps the first boy she’d let so far into her room for so long. 

He caught himself reading perhaps a little too intensely into that thought.

Too much, Vic. _TOO FAR._ She had an en suite bathroom like at Peter’s place, with a ruby-looking knob that smelled of her lip gloss, (summer berries and wasp honey and synthetic cherry)  and perfume. _Girls that pissed rosewater,_ figured Belch in his right ear, grinning small. _Girls that ate diamonds._ He spent the next twenty minutes with his head over her sink, scrubbing out the shit in his hair, trying not to wander over her rows of bottles and combs. (They were neat, arranged by colour, but the display was nonetheless slightly haphazard, like it’d been hit by a storm —the storm was most likely Greta, in fact— and then hastily rearranged. That was sort of cute.)

Eventually, she called, “What’s taking so long? Do I need to come in and help?” and he startled, bashing his head hard on the tap. (”Aw, _motherfuck!_ ”) Her bedroom fell silent save for a disbelieving giggle but he was out in a flash, whipping his sudsy hair ‘round his head as she looked on, incredulous. She was still sitting on her bed in wait, cross-legged now, posed as to look pissed-off and precocious and quietly amused all at once. Her hair, in a long high ponytail held up with a bobble, flashed in the biting autumn light as she whipped her head around to look at him. A grin stretched and grew too big for her on her face, opening like a sunflower.

“You look like a rat.” He didn’t doubt it; hanging over his eyes in wet pieces, his hair appeared an ugly pasty straw-colour, almost see-through. “Jeez Louise, a drowned rat.” She didn’t bother to cover her mouth with her hand when she laughed but her hand twitched like it wanted to, and he understood, a little bit. Bowie wasn’t quite like all her pals, not really, except when she was. She was the intersection of thrill and of brash truth-or-dare nights and of propriety, done up in denim and rhinestones and the tender sunkissed play of light over her bare shoulders that suggested long hours spent in the dwindling fall sun. He found he liked that alone very much. 

He grimaced, and spoke tautly, wryly. “Jeezum, don’t rub it in.” All her face crinkled when she smiled, crinkled and creased and _shone._ She tapped the towelled floor with her now-bare foot, —he was suddenly very heavy in his muddy combat boots reeking of vegetation and plated in decomposing russet leaves— motioning for him to sit. “Thought we were done. Aren’t we done?”

( _We_. Even that, how she'd let him say that, he found appealing.) She rolled her eyes like she’d never heard something so exquisitely  _dumbfuck_ , and fished from her little pile another little bottle. “You need toner. Unless you want to look like a fucking scarecrow all year, huh?” The turn of her mouth suggested she’d find this very, very, amusing.

He did not want to look like a scarecrow, a straw-man, a hick boy, all fucking year, so he sat cross-legged before her again, palms crossed neatly at his lap. On the way over he hazarded a glance out her window and caught the unfortunate, familiar form of Kaspbrak peeking over her fence, dwelling over her perfect lawn. “Is that little baby Wheezy?”

She cast him a glance that quickly soured, curdling her pleasant features. “That creep. He doesn’t even live ‘round here but he keeps walking by, like he’s waiting for something, or— or _me_.” Outside, Kaspbrak hovered around her letterbox, dithering, visibly nervous. “He keeps trying to wave at me. It’s _so_ fucking weird.”

Vic eyed him darkly. “I could deal with that.” This, quiet, in a huffy, sneering, rush charged with contempt, bitterness. She laughed, but it was abruptly cut short as she cleared her throat and went to town on his damp scalp. _Jeezum-crow Vic, you’re doing a great fucking job this fine day, aren’t you?_  Realistically he had to be aware that this was not how girls were asked out at all, but all of it tumbled from his mouth as she slathered something foamy and cool over his temples. “Little shit,” he sighed, matter-of-factly. “Chase him off,” he proposed. “He’d scatter. Never see him again.”

Greta snickered. “Aren’t you _charming.”_

 _(Aren’t you, Vic?)_ He drew in a breath that he didn’t expel ‘til Kaspbrak was well out of sight and Greta finished tending to his aggrieved roots. She had gentle fingers, wary despite the sharp, rowdy edges of her, and only pulled too hard once, puffing out incredulous laughter when he yowled. (”Notsohard, _fuck_.” “Christ, grow a pair, won’t you?”) His legs went numb and dead beneath him as she uncrossed hers and swung them to and fro against his sides, occasionally nudging him, skin-on-skin. They made small talk about all the little pricks ruining apple-picking in autumn, and Greta’s mother, (who was apparently remarrying into a pharmacist's family like no West Broadway citizen would do in their right mind, thank you very fucking much) and Greta’s classes, (all of which she more or less excelled in) and cars. (Mostly Belch’s.)

She wanted an M3, a monster of a beamer like the ones seen on the telly, a dead red one with an exhaust like a rapacious mouth. She turned her nose up at Peter’s Camaro, Amy, the Faddens’ overdone RX-7, and he likedliked _liked_ that, too. She didn’t play ball, but she played hockey. (For his —assumed, but correct nevertheless— passion for the sport she spared an eye-roll, a darling, crooked grin. “Of course you’d like it. That’s such a _guy_ thing. A _man_ thing.” “Ball’s fine.” “It’s overcompensation. You wouldn’t like it so much if you had your own goddamn balls.”) She found most of the boys of Derry dull, and couldn’t stand West Broadway’s cream of the crop for even five seconds.

Still, she allowed herself to jabber on to Vic, and for Vic to babble right back. With her gloves off and his hair swept off his face in a foamy pomp, (”You look like fucking Elvis, _omigod_ —”) they drifted closer and closer and closer ‘til

‘til their space became shared, ‘til the sun began to set, settling over them a gentle blanket of reddish dim. He was turned ‘round, facing her, now, and she

she was facing him sprawled over her bed, her arms slung over its side, coming close to his crumpled collar, (some shitty shiny Lycra-nylon _bull_ , not at all like her artfully distressed denim; Greta Bowie was a top chick, as was her attire) fretting vaguely over him. She was close and close and close and Vic was closer, mouth feeling like it was stuffed full with cotton as he tilted his chin up and she inched a bit forward and for a second,

for a second he thought she might actually kiss him, —he could feel her breath, and the artificial cherry-smell of stale, vinegary kirsch wafting from her lips— so tantalisingly _close_ was her harsh full pout, but then there was the thrum of an engine downstairs and she jerked away, mirroring Vic’s slow blink. It took longer than it should’ve for him to get used to the sudden decrease in proximity, and he found he was a little flustered, a little _less_ , bothered by the lack of— girl, contact, _Greta_.

She flipped her hair out of her face. “You should go wash that out. Elvis is a really shitty look on you.”

He got a look on the way to her bathroom and was sore to find that she was right; it really was. Nevertheless, he caught her half-dazed, appraising grin in the window as he closed the door behind him and set to rinsing out her efforts, features stung by the tainted water, his buoyant grin.

He was done quicker this time, and Greta’s bedroom mirror showed him a new Vic, a Vic with hair so blond it was almost white. He shook it about as she looked on amused, (as she would look on a monkey, or a Main Street-mongrel, or a boy trying to win her favour— which was exactly what he fucking was, _Jeezum_ ) carding out the damp. The sudden pallor accentuated his braced teeth, his wan, pinched features, he thought, but in an instant she was coming up beside him _(oh my oh my vic)_ with her arms crossed across her chest, nudging him with a slim bare arm. “It looks good.”

He rubbed the buzzed back of his neck. “I look like a fruit.” A pansy, and she was a sunflower, stretching on towards the sky.

“Are you saying I didn’t do a good job? Prick.”

He rolled his eyes and they jostled about ‘til whoever was parked outside spat out two furious honks, jerking them apart. His hands found the pockets of his jeans, making fists in their relative safety. “I’ll see you ‘round, Greta.” His mouth made her name (not _chick_ , not _Bowie_ ) at the last second and she raised an eyebrow, smiling archly.

“You know you’re not cool enough to pull that off.” Into his arms she manhandled bottles and boxes, dwelling, he thought, on the press of their hands together. “These are conditioners, oils. For maintenance. So you don’t look a weasel again.”

“You said rat.”

“It’s all the same, Vic.”

In the end, she saw him off, denim jacket pulled ‘round her to offset the harsh cold of the approaching dusk. “I’ll be seeing you, Vic,” and though he shot her an unamused glance he knew she was definitely fucking cool enough to pull it off. A real top chick. 

“See you, Bowie,” and she was gone into her pretty little turreted house, and he was dragging his soles down her neat driveway to the Trans Am. It was populated by at _least_ three more people than it had been when he’d arrived: Belch sat at the wheel, of course, but Marcia sprawled over Henry’s lap in the passenger's. Gard, Hockstetter, and Moose crammed into the back completed the picture, with Peter hoisted over Moose as if the latter were some kind of booster seat. Vic took one look at them and made for the other direction but Belch honked again and he was forced to settle for the awkward, mountainous space made by Hockstetter and Moose’s touching legs. (Thank _fuck_ he wasn’t claustrophobic; thank the _lord_ _almighty_.) Peter took his head in his lap, petting fondly the pale strands of hair, and Vic let him, settling, dopily pleased, into the touch.

“Can’t believe you actually did it,” Gard was saying, “Jeezum-crow, you look a real fucking fruit now!”

Patrick tacked on an idle “Juicy Fruit,” because he could, smiling viciously. “Half-queer, even, _Vic.”_

Vic itched at the moniker. Hockstetter should _not_ have been able to call him that, but he shunted the thought aside, concentrating on Belch’s wiggling eyebrows in the mirror, Marcia’s piercing wail of laughter, Henry’s puffed-out sigh.

“I think you look _lovely,_ Victor,” she crooned. “Dapper, even. Like some kinda punk.” 

“Smallest, tiniest fucking punk I ever seen.” This was Belch. Vic motioned at Moose, who complied and hit the back of his seat, hard.

Henry lit up a smoke. “Whatever, let’s get out of here. Feels like I’m gonna be fucking arrested just for breathing here.”

They peeled out, and Vic knew his dopey smile wouldn’t leave his face for a long while yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can't tell me greta wouldn't really, really like blondie.


End file.
